Tell him to look for any job he can get to get his foot in the door. If he's good, he'll move up quickly.
Unsolicited story: We hired an engineer about a year ago. He was a few months out of college (OU) and his first job working for a mom and pop operator didn't work out when they couldn't pay him anymore. He was a friend of a guy in our land department, and had offers to be a pumper from EOG and Concho. I said we'll hire him on a pumper's salary and work him like an engineer and see how it works out. Worst case, we'll put him in the field pumping. His resume wasn't super impressive, and he was pretty quiet in his interview. Turns out, he's really good as a reservoir and production engineer. He can even hold his own in finance. We now pay him like an engineer we don't want to lose.